Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is ahead of his Republican challenger Bernie Moreno in November, according to a new poll by conservative magazine Rasmussen Reports.
According to the August 13-17 poll of 1,267 likely voters in Ohio, Brown is leading with 47 percent of the vote, five percentage points ahead of Moreno, who has 42 percent.
Democrats currently hold a slim majority in the Senate, with 51 senators caucusing with the party, including several who are formally independent, while 49 senators do the same for the GOP. Republicans hope to flip the Senate in November and are widely expected to win the West Virginia seat being vacated by independent Senator Joe Manchin, a former Democrat who remains caucusing with the party.
Rasmussen Reports is known for working closely with various conservative organizations and was removed from the list of pollsters on the aggregation website FiveThirtyEight earlier this year, according to The Washington Post.
Rasmussen’s poll in Ohio is broadly consistent with a survey of 400 likely voters conducted by ActiVote between July 20 and August 12, which showed Brown with 52.5 percent of the vote, a five-point lead, while Moreno had 47.5 percent.
A similar poll of 600 likely voters in the state conducted between July 23 and 28 by AARP Research found that 46 percent of voters planned to support Brown, putting him four percentage points ahead of Moreno’s 42 percent.
Newsweek has reached out to Brown and Moreno’s Senate campaign office for comment via email and online request form.
Rasmussen Reports also conducted polls in the key Senate swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan between August 13 and 17.
In Arizona, 1,187 likely voters were surveyed. Forty-eight percent said they would vote for current Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in the Senate race, while 40 percent said they would support Republican Kari Lake.
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In Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Bob Casey is ahead of his Republican rival David McCormick by 46 percent to 43 percent, according to a Rasmussen Report poll of 1,312 voters in the state.
And in Michigan, Democrat Elissa Slotkin is leading Republican Mike Rogers 45 percent to 43 percent in a poll of 1,093 voters in the state.
Between July 26 and August 2, two surveys of likely voters were conducted in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by the Cook Political Report/GS Strategy Group/BSG Swing State Project. The survey sampled 435 voters in Arizona, 406 in Michigan, 403 in Nevada, 411 in Pennsylvania and 404 in Wisconsin.
According to the polls, the Democratic candidates were ahead of their Republican rivals in key races in all five states. The Republicans have only been able to improve their vote share since the last poll in Wisconsin in May.
